On your Marx, it's the People's Protest Games

Threat: Chairman of the British Olympic Association, Lord Moynihan, has warned that it would take just one 'lone protestor' to plunge the Olympics into chaos

Just ‘one idiot’ could ruin London 2012, according to the chairman of the British Olympic Association Lord Moynihan. A lone protester could plunge the Games into chaos.

To his credit, Lord Moynihan acknowledges that there is very little that could be done to prevent a repeat of the disruption caused to the Boat Race at the weekend.

As Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin observed, in a different context, in 1932: the bomber will always get through.

Even if he isn’t hell-bent on blowing himself up and taking others with him, a single maniac can cause serious inconvenience to competitors and spectators alike.

Look at the mayhem brought about by the self-styled ‘anti-elitist’ campaigner Trenton Oldfield, who swam in front of the Oxford and Cambridge crews, forcing the event to be halted temporarily.

Moynihan said: ‘It just takes, and is likely to be, one idiot. That is why all the security measures need to be put in place to minimise the chance of that happening.

‘You can never get it perfect unless you remove all the crowds and nobody is going to dream of doing anything like that.’

Don’t you believe it. I have no doubt that some high-level security expert has already proposed holding the Games behind closed doors, just in case.

Britain’s burgeoning risk assessment industry will seize on any incident, no matter how trivial, to expand its lucrative empire. Wait until the organisers of the Boat Race get their insurance demand for next year.

The Thames will be lined from Mortlake to Putney with marshals in hi-viz jackets and hard hats. All spectators will have to produce photo ID and pass through airport-style full body scanners before being allowed anywhere near the river banks.

The mantra is always the same: Better safe than sorry. If it saves one life...

Shock: Trenton Oldfield interrupted the annual Boat Race at the weekend in protest against elitism

We have become the most risk-averse society in history, cowed by elf’n’safety and terrified of the remotest possibility that someone might actually get hurt while going about their daily business.

In the name of ‘security’, we are subjected to levels of surveillance that would shame the former Stasi state of East Germany.

Every time we leave the house, we are caught on CCTV hundreds of times a day. Our movements are tracked by number plate recognition cameras, bank ATMs and electronic bus and train passes. Now they even intend to listen to our phone calls, read our emails and monitor every stroke of our computer keyboards.

All of this in the vain pursuit of keeping us ‘safe’. It’s for our own protection, we are told, as we are treated like terrorists, fingerprinted, photographed and subjected to virtual strip searches at airports.

Each time there is the slightest security scare, a little bit of our liberty dies. Every litter bin in London was sealed after the IRA bombing campaign in the Seventies — and it still didn’t stop them blowing up Harrods and Bishopsgate.

Hold tight: 'Urban explorer' Bradley Garrett makes his way up a crane towards the summit of the 1,000ft tall Shard building in central London

After the Boat Race incident on Saturday, my heart sank when I saw yesterday’s photograph of a so-called ‘place-hacker’ protester perched 1,000ft up on top of the still-to-be-completed Shard skyscraper. We already have to pass through prison-style security before we are allowed into office blocks. Get ready for yet another ‘review’, which is almost certain to result in ever-stricter controls on our freedom of movement.

You can hear the justification now: If an ‘urban explorer’ can get to the top of London’s tallest building, just imagine what an Al Qaeda suicide bomber could do.

That’s the hackneyed hue-and-cry that goes up after every high-profile ‘security breach’. We even heard it after the Boat Race incident on Saturday. Somehow, I would imagine Al Qaeda has bigger targets in mind.

The correct response to the Boat Race nutcase would have been to keep on rowing. If one of the oars had sliced off the top of his head like a boiled egg, so much the better. It may have discouraged other publicity-seeking lunatics from throwing themselves in the Thames.

Death by misadventure. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

As for the clown who climbed the Shard, it’s a shame he didn’t plummet to a horrible death. We could have scraped what was left of him off the pavement and put the video on YouTube, with the requisite health warning: Anyone climbing the Shard does so at his own risk. Have a nice day.

Instead, there will be another pointless, knee-jerk ‘safety’ investigation dedicated to ensuring that nothing like it will ever happen again.

You might just as well try to prevent the sun coming up in the morning.

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I’ve got a better idea. Rather than trying to stop protesters disrupting the Olympics, why not give them their own Games? After all, Britain leads the world in mindless demonstrations.

Once the Olympics is over, let the Stop The City crowd occupy the stadium and pitch their tents on the grass. The interchangeable Stop The Cuts and Stop The War brigades can take it in turns to chuck bottles and bricks at cardboard cut-outs of coppers.

Instead of throwing the javelin, they can hurl scaffolding poles to their hearts’ content.

Threat? The Boat Race protestor and the Shard 'urban explorer' have predictably stirred fear within the Olympic organisers, who worry that lone protestors may target the games

We could build a full-scale model of Wood Green shopping centre and encourage a little pro-celebrity looting, starring Russell Brand and the Friends of Mark Duggan.

There could even be a special Paralympics, which would give Britain’s very own world-class wheelchair protester Jody McIntyre the chance to go for gold and set a new all-comers’ record for climbing the stairs at the Millbank Tower.

While the deranged war on ‘man-made global warming’ continues to escalate, has anyone bothered asking the polar bears what they think?

One of the unforseen consequences of measures to combat climate change seems to have been an outbreak of baldness in the Arctic Circle. Scientists have noticed that polar bears have been struck by a mystery illness that causes their fur to fall out.

My own guess is that this is a result of the hole in the ozone layer freezing over and blocking out the few rays of sun that reach the frozen north. No wonder the polar bears are heading south in ever-increasing numbers.

If you were a polar bear, where would you rather be: lying on a sun lounger, sipping Tequila Sunrises, on South Beach, Miami — or shivering in the Arctic Circle doing a passable impersonation of Right Said Fred?

No one is quite sure what has caused the hair loss among polar bears. Seals and walruses have also been affected.

How long before aircraft are sent over the Arctic Circle to spray industrial quantities of Regaine over the unfortunate animals.

Failing that we could set up a Shane Warne transplant clinic at the North Pole or open a salon selling a selection of tasteful syrups.

So if you are sitting in the garden under your patio heater this summer and are surprised by a polar bear sporting a Terry Wogan toupee helping himself from the barbecue, don’t panic.

It means that we’re winning the war on global warming.

Barry Humphries: Next London Mayor?

Vote for Edna, possums

The ‘manifesto’ of the Aussie maniac who jumped in front of the Boat Race is a predictable mish-mash of lunacy.

But one proposal stands out. Trenton Oldfield thinks that Dame Edna Everage should be the next Mayor of London.

Now Barry Humphries has retired Dame Edna from showbiz this could be the perfect career move. Given the calibre of the current candidates and their puerile name-calling campaign, Dame Edna could be just the woman we need to give Londoners a boost.

There could still be roles for Boris as her bridesmaid Madge Allsop and Red Ken as her louche cultural attaché Sir Les Patterson. I’d certainly vote for her. Wouldn’t you, possums?

Comedian Steve Coogan has been at the forefront of the campaign to expose phone hacking and prevent invasions of privacy.

No one can accuse him of hypocrisy. Coogan is even refusing to tell a court who was driving his Range Rover when it was clocked exceeding the speed limit on Hove seafront, East Sussex, in October. Even though he faces a driving ban, he is so committed to safeguarding privacy that — unlike Chris Huhne — he is not prepared to name the driver.

Back of the net!

1968: The Dundee Spring

According to former Labour minister Chris Mullin, George Galloway is fond of boasting that he received his ‘first injury in the struggle’ when he was kicked by a police horse during the famous anti-Vietnam war rally outside the U.S. Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square.

I know that Gorgeous George was a precocious kid, but when the demo took place in March 1968, he was living in Dundee and was only 13. Is he suffering from false memory syndrome or did his parents really let him off his homework so he could travel from Scotland to London to take part in a violent demonstration?

I’m not saying he made it up to embellish his reputation as a radical socialist, but I’d love to see the pictures. Because if George really was kicked by a police horse in Grosvenor Square in 1968, I’m a Muslim.